A proposed major new housing development threatens the rural character of Normandy. Have your say in the current public consultation (closing date 12 noon on 23 October).

Guildford Borough Council [GBC] is currently consulting on a revised version of its Local Plan that includes a major new site in Normandy. This would see 105 houses built over a three year period on highly sensitive Green Belt land, to the north of the railway line at Wanborough Station, on the east side of Glaziers Lane. This represents a 7% increase in the number of houses in Normandy (see the map below for approximate boundary - for more precise location see the PDF document "Submission Local Plan: Strategy and Sites - Main Modifications - Part 2: Sites, page 265" on the GBC Local Plan consultation pages).

This site is only included because at the Plan’s Examination in Public in June the Planning Inspector challenged GBC to build a greater proportion of houses in the early part of the Plan period and also to make up for some of Woking’s housing shortfall (42 extra houses a year). He suggested that more houses could be built in Guildford Town Centre.

However in response GBC has proposed building more houses on five sites on Green Belt land, including a new one, Site A64, a “Village Extension” that would take the Flexford settlement across the natural barrier of the railway line and start to close the gap between the distinct settlements of Normandy and Flexford. This is a completely new site that has not featured in any previous versions of the Local Plan that have gone out to public consultation.

Because it is not easy to find the rationale for the A64 proposal in the GBC documentation we have posted a link to the “Sustainability Assessment” as well as the site map on our website.

We think Normandy residents are entitled to have answers to three questions:

What are the “exceptional circumstances” that justify taking this site out of the Green Belt, given the exaggerated housing numbers on which the Local Plan rests?

Why is it considered acceptable to extend the Flexford settlement north of the railway line onto a site rated ‘red’ for sensitivity, thereby threatening the eventual urbanisation of the whole of Normandy?

How can a site be inserted at the last minute into a Local Plan process when it has not featured in any previous public consultations?